


the two of us, against the universe

by sunshineshades



Series: SVT/Woozi oneshot i wrote during partial lockdown [5]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Not Beta Read, Nothing Hurts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:40:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23316286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshineshades/pseuds/sunshineshades
Summary: Seokmin, the unexpected hero, searched for Jihoon, the supposedly villain, after he learned that he's the Chosen One. Also because Jihoon's his friend.
Relationships: Lee Jihoon | Woozi & Lee Seokmin | DK
Series: SVT/Woozi oneshot i wrote during partial lockdown [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1669018
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	the two of us, against the universe

**Author's Note:**

> There's nothing epic in here if that's what you're looking for.

The place was without character. There's nothing distinct or remarkable about it that Seokmin could remember once he left. The buildings stood erect on the ground, yet with no purpose, as though the people who built them did so in order to meet the requirements needed for a ‘town.’ 

Seokmin gazed upward. The sky looked grey. It seemed like the sun was intentionally hiding behind the clouds, not wanting to coat this ghost town in its brilliant golden ray and giving it a speck of colour and life to the otherwise dull and dead place. 

After a few minutes of wandering around, Seokmin finally stopped. His eyes fell on a figure not far from where he stood. It took a while for Seokmin to recognize the other due to his position. His back was toward Seokmin. And he was crouching down. But a thought entered Seokmin's head. There's no other person on this world that would come here. Nobody but one. Seokmin immediately approached him. 

The other was playing with a cat, with a twig. 

"Everyone keeps telling me you're the bad guy," Seokmin said as soon as he squatted down in front of Jihoon. He glanced at the cat who was apparently taking a nap, seemingly unbothered by the little distraction from Jihoon and his twig. 

"So?" 

"What do you mean by ‘so’?"

Jihoon lifted up his head. For a moment, they exchanged a quiet look with each other. He then quirked his eyebrow at Seokmin. "I thought you already knew that," he said after a while. "The news that I am the bad guy. The _supervillain_ in their stupid novel."

Seokmin blinked at him and didn't respond. 

"And so, what? Are you the Chosen One? Are you the superhero who's gonna defeat me in the final battle later?"

A brief moment of silence passed before Seokmin answered, "Yeah. Something like that."

That made Jihoon frowned. 

"I don't know how it happened as well," Seokmin added. "One day I woke up as an average guy and the next I became the Chosen One. Just because I pulled an old looking sword out of some stone. This whole thing looks shady to me. Don't you think so?"

Jihoon's frown deepened and such kind of reaction alone was enough to let Seokmin know that the other did not think this entire situation a tiny bit shady at all. 

"It's actually a real deal?" Seokmin asked, looking all serious and shocked. 

Jihoon studied his face a moment longer and nodded, slowly. 

"What the..." Seokmin trailed off and plonked down on the ground beneath him, his mind blanked. The cat's ear twitched and before long, it opened one of its eyes for a short while. The cat went back to its evening nap later on when it sensed nothing out of ordinary in its surrounding. 

Jihoon gently stroked the cat's body and heaved a breath. "I wonder how it works," he said quietly. 

"Me too." Seokmin sat cross-legged, and stared absent-mindedly at the cat. He observed in silence the way Jihoon stroked its body, at the slight twitches of his tendons when he did that. "Is something bad gonna happen to you? That will make you be the bad guy they said you would?"

"Is something bad gonna happen to you and the people too?" Jihoon spoke after a moment of silence. "That will make you come after me because I'm the cause of it?"

Seokmin felt his heart dropped to his stomach when Jihoon blurted out such question. Never had that thought ever crossed his mind before. The two of them, against each other. The two of them, on completely different sides. It didn't sound right to Seokmin. "Can't we fight it? Fate, destiny, whatever it is?"

The cat's ear twitched again when the gentle stroking on its body stopped. Jihoon looked up at Seokmin. He narrowed his eyes at him, in doubt or disbelief Seokmin couldn't tell. 

"It doesn't have to be this way," he added. "You and me, fighting each other like they said."

"Well, although you're not really my favourite person on this world or something, I don't want to fight you either. But on the other hand, I don't think it's in our power to change shit. You know what I mean?"

"No, it's our life, so we're the one who can control our fate." A brief pause. "That's what I believe."

"But you just become the Chosen One," Jihoon countered. "Doesn't seem to me like you're in control of that."

Seokmin fell quiet. There was a bitter truth in Jihoon's words, no matter how hard he wanted to deny it. Growing up, Seokmin never once believed in the myth. Anything that had to do with the legendary Script of Life sounded like a lie to him made up by the government to cover their true motives. A grand scheme of agenda to brainwash the people's mind into believing things that Seokmin doubted were real so they could dominate the entire world. 

He recalled seeing the script once during his school years, at the museum. There was a special event at the time where students were given the rare chance to see with their own eyes how the Script of Life looked like. The female guide was practically gushing over what Seokmin thought was just an ancient looking scroll with messy scribbling which reminded him of his friend Mingyu's handwriting. _Is that even a human language?_ Seokmin remembered thinking that to himself. 

Needless to say, he didn't believe in the prophecy, the sword, and the whole Chosen One thing at all. That's it until he lost in the dare he made with Mingyu and Minghao, and the initial plan to embarrass himself while struggling to pull the sword out of the stone in public turned into a news headline instead when he somehow managed to pull out the supposedly stuck sword. In just overnight, Seokmin was hailed as the Chosen One and was thrusted the big responsibility to save the world by defeating the bad guy, which happened to be Jihoon. 

"You know what," Seokmin said, "I never trust it. When they said you're gonna be the villain. Just because you're what...different? What kind of different are they talking about anyway?"

"Well, apparently I'm the ‘dark descent’ of Woozi. I even inherited his looks." Jihoon sighed. 

Seokmin had heard the name before during one of his history classes. The guy named Woozi was said to be the supervillain in the history of the city. He destroyed almost the entire place and killed nearly everyone who was in his way. Seokmin tried to remember the picture he'd seen in the textbook. "But isn't that just a rough sketch of him? Also, even if you do look like him, it doesn't mean that you're his descendant. You know what? I heard that there are seven people in this world that have the same face as us."

Jihoon lifted his eyebrows at Seokmin. A small laugh escaped from him. "Where did you hear that from?" He shook his head and heaved a breath. "Well, what if I _am_ his descendant?"

Seokmin furrowed his brows as he tried to come up with a reply. "That's not a problem as well," he said. 

"And why is that?"

"You see, things like looks, physical attributes...that's inheritable."

"O...kay..."

"What I'm trying to say is that...You can be his descendant and look exactly like him, but it doesn't mean that you're gonna be as evil as him." A brief pause. "Moral can't really be passed down through DNA or anything, you know what I'm saying? That's what I believe." 

Silence ensued shortly afterward. There was hesitation in the way Jihoon looked at him, but Seokmin also caught a glint of hope in the other's eyes. 

Seokmin took Jihoon's hand into both of his, to which had the latter flinched slightly at the boy's sudden action. He'd made up his mind. "Hyung, we don't have to follow the path they'd set for us," he said. "We don't have to choose sides. We can just be on our side!"

Jihoon frowned. "Our side?"

Seokmin nodded, enthusiastically. "Yes! Our side! You can be whoever you want to be. It doesn't have to end with you being the bad guy and me the good guy. It doesn't have to end like the Woozi guy and..."

"Dokyeom."

"Who's that?"

"The good guy."

"Oh. That's his name? Well, we don't have to be like them. Instead of fighting each other, we can just stay like this."

Jihoon hesitated. "What if the fate has something else to say about this?"

"We'll fight it," Seokmin replied, as if that was the easiest thing to do. 

"Really?" Jihoon gave Seokmin a bored, and somewhat doubtful, look. "You want to fight fate?"

Seokmin's nod came off a little too eagerly. In thr meantime, he squeezed Jihoon's hand a bit harder. "We'll fight the fate if we need to. Don't you think it sounds cool? The two of us. Against the fate."

"But we might have to defy the world too. And probably universe."

"W-Well..." Seokmin said, his voice slightly shaky. 

"It doesn't sound bad, though. Just a bit too ambitious, I would say," Jihoon commented. He pulled his hand away from Seokmin's grasp. The latter was glowing. 

"Just remember," Seokmin added afterward, his voice fell lower, "whatever happens in the future, it's not entirely your fault. I'm not going to blame you."

Jihoon blinked at Seokmin, studying the other for what felt like a long time. He raised his brows and continued stroking the cat. "That's a tough promise you just made to yourself." 

"People make mistakes all the time. Well, maybe I will get mad at you at some point. And there will be times where you're going to hate me. And we will have fights and arguments, all that"—Seokmin sighed—"but isn't that how every relationship works? Family, friends, lovers."

Jihoon's hand paused momentarily on the cat's belly. 

"And I don't want it to break us apart. I hope, after all the storms they're gonna put us through, we'd come together at the end not as enemies, but as friends, brothers, partners. Don't you feel the same way too?"

Some long seconds of quiet passed by after Seokmin threw the question at the other. Jihoon seemed to have fallen into a deep thought, with his gaze on the ground and a pensive look on his face. The stroking halted as well and the cat jerked its body for a split second before it changed position. 

Seokmin grew nervous as he waited for Jihoon's response. The deafening silence of the place was not helping at all. Instead, it merely added to the unnecessary tension. The only peaceful thing about the situation was the still napping cat between them and its soft purring. 

Soon, Jihoon looked up. Their eyes met. And before long, Seokmin let out a breath of relief for his question was answered with a smile, full of belief and assurance, it made his heart leapt. 

"Then we'll make this cat here our mascot!" Seokmin picked up the cat and shook its body out of excitement. He screamed in pain, however, when the cat hissed and its sharp claws grazed his cheek. Immediately Seokmin let it go and whined, his hand hovering over the stinging spot. "Damn you kitty cat!" he complained, pouting his lips. 

Jihoon burst out laughing at what he thought was ridiculous, to which upset Seokmin even more. "We don't need a mascot," he said after his laugh subsided and stared, with a smile on his face, at the cat that left them behind elegantly, as if it was the queen of this place.

_The two of us, against the universe, huh?_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading ♡
> 
> Kudos and comments are both appreciated!


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